Collateral Damage: Pierce’s Minutes

After last night’s overtime marathon, The Truth is now averaging a team-high 37.8 minutes per game, about two more minutes per game than last season and his highest total since ’05-06 (which, I realize, isn’t that long ago).

Here are his minutes for the last 10 games:

45, 37, 47, 45, 45, 40, 32, 38, 38, 47.

I realize that Doc has little choice but to play him heavy minutes right now. But the injuries have gotten so bad that they are causing some collateral damage–forcing the C’s best-time crunch time scorer to play more minutes than he or anyone else would probably like him to be playing in regular season games against Miami.

The two minute difference between last year and this year may not seem like much, and maybe it isn’t. It adds up to about 3.5 extra games over the course of a full season, and I have idea when an extra 100 or 200 minutes starts to make a difference to a 31-year-old star with more than 30,000 career minutes. Can’t help, though. Pierce played 38 minutes per game in the playoffs last season, so he’s matching that number so far in the current regular season.